One week down.

Hope is been great for everyone reading this out there…and just to throw it out there I came across the website… http://www.xmasclock.com/  (o;

So, the writing has been patchy. Here and there. Still struggling to nail the daily word count but I’m still trying. I’ll talk about a little why later but for now I wanted to throw a project out there that I’m working on. I met a group of awesome people online who write in a variety of genres and rock each one. They were really to invite me into their group to collaborate on a science fiction project with a difference. The twist was to choose a fairy tale and give it a science fiction twist. Not wanted to give myself an easy road, I chose ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ I loved the story as a child and knew it more than any other so thought, ‘why not.’

The story was difficult to give a sci fi twist but I think I’ve come up with something. My story involve interstellar colonization and invasion which tie in well to the story but it’s giving the story a feel of arrogance, arrogance of those who feel they know better but end up loosing nearly everything. Anyway, it’s in the process and will hopefully come to fruition by end of Feb.

My other project is my second book in the Dean Cornell Series. This has been a slow build for me but I can safely say the juices are flowing again. It’s been really influenced by two sources, 1. Angela Marson’s amazing Detective Kim Stone series of books (check them out if this is your cup of tea, awesome Angela’s Amazon Page) and 2. A BBC series called ‘Luther,’ which has such great characters and develop them incredibly well (Luther on IMDB). 

Both are well worth a look and are really giving me much to think about with my own fiction.

Now the other thing I wanted to talk about was a little more sensitive and something I would suspect affects many other people out there.

It’s about depression and anxiety. This is something that has plagued me on and off for as long as I can remember and it’s one thing that has placed the biggest and most difficult to remove barriers to my motivation to write. I have had days where ideas would desperately want to get out, my imagination would be running wild with thoughts, fueled inspirations galore only to fall flat when something triggers a sense of deep sadness within me. It’s so very hard to explain sometimes how and why this happens but it does and it’s very real. Help is everywhere, people are more than willing to listen but having to tell them or having to hear the words of admission from your own mouth can be like a dagger to the heart. At least, it was for me.

I’ve written about character who have been depressed and anxious and know exactly what they should do. I know who they should see and why but when fiction becomes real life those plans don’t seem to translate quite as easily. I only write this now and say these things because I’ve recently opened up about the darkness that descends sometimes. It’s been unbelievably frightening but cathartic to do so. People were willing to listen to me and begin to understand why I was feeling like that. It hasn’t been easy and sometimes people take it as a failure on their part for not being there for you but they do understand eventually. Admittance is one part. The next part is far bigger, it’s getting help for it. This is where I feel we all differ completely and one size does not fit all. Therapy is a powerful tool to use but doesn’t work for everyone. There are various types of therapies to avail of too so if depression and/or anxiety are something you suffer with. Pharmacological therapies are aplenty and these work very well for people in the short and long term but getting to the root cause is always the long term goal with mental health issues. Once the core of the issues is exposed which can be very very tough to do and even tougher to understand and deal with but once it’s out there it’s there to be dealt with.

A resource I’ve been using lately which I find really good. Happify (Happify) is an app based site that uses a variety of methods to improve moods and help deal with an array of mental health issues.

So that’s my small piece to add to this very vast subject. All I can say to finish here is that it’s okay to admit it, it’s better to talk about it and it’s a journey to deal with it but in the end it’ll be a well worth it.